Weierstrass points of superelliptic curves C. SHOR a T. SHASKA b a Department of Mathematics, Western New England University, Springfield, MA, USA; E-mail:
[email protected] b Department of Mathematics, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA; E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract. In this lecture we give a brief introduction to Weierstrass points of curves and computational aspects of q-Weierstrass points on superel- liptic curves. Keywords. hyperelliptic curves, superelliptic curves, Weierstrass points Introduction These lectures are prepared as a contribution to the NATO Advanced Study In- stitute held in Ohrid, Macedonia, in August 2014. The topic of the conference was on the arithmetic of superelliptic curves, and this lecture will focus on the Weierstrass points of such curves. Since the Weierstrass points are an important concept of the theory of Riemann surfaces and algebraic curves and serve as a prerequisite for studying the automorphisms of the curves we will give in this lecture a detailed account of holomorphic and meromorphic functions of Riemann arXiv:1502.06285v1 [math.CV] 22 Feb 2015 surfaces, the proofs of the Weierstrass and Noether gap theorems, the Riemann- Hurwitz theorem, and the basic definitions and properties of higher-order Weier- strass points. Weierstrass points of algebraic curves are defined as a consequence of the important theorem of Riemann-Roch in the theory of algebraic curves. As an immediate application, the set of Weierstrass points is an invariant of a curve which is useful in the study of the curve’s automorphism group and the fixed points of automorphisms. In Part 1 we cover some of the basic material on Riemann surfaces and algebraic curves and their Weierstrass points.